February 22, 2018--Code-Red Kids: 3:00 am Raw Draft

In less than a week, it's become all about our children. Everyone's children, including those of us who do not have any of our own.

These are the children of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the latest place in America where 14 children and three adults were gunned down on Valentine's Day.

These children have been ubiquitous every day since--on social media, on TV, in the press. Including last night at a town hall meeting in South Florida where calmly they skewered and dismantled their senator, Marco Rubio, as he tried to con and patronize them, attempting to wiggle out of taking responsibility for the fact that the National Rifle Association (NRA) have him on their payroll and thus own him lock, stock, and barrel (to use a weaponized idiom). 

He could only sputter when students asked him to explain and justify this. He couldn't except to say, with unintentional honesty, that they do so because they "buy his agenda." Do they ever. By bankrolling him they are assured he will do their bloody bidding. He had nothing to say when they pointed out that he received $3.3 million in campaign lucre last year, three times what any of the other hundreds in Congress who are on the NRA payroll pocketed. 

They are all of our children because they are as perfect as we imagine ours to be or would want them to be if we had any of our own. In them we see a reflection of ourselves at our imagined best, as we would like to be, hope that we are.

Self-confident, well-mannered, articulate, forceful, passionate, persistent, polite, knowledgeable, just, fair-minded, and eloquent, they invite us to grieve with them and now are calling us, if necessary shaming us, to action. 

Inviting us to support them in saving their lives since as code-red, children who every day of their school lives have lived with the real threat that today, this week, this year the code-red drills they routinely practice, where they learn to hide in the coat closet when there is an actual shooter present in their classroom, will be more than a drill but an imminent threat. 

With respect and without averting there eyes either to us, their parents, their neighbors, their teachers, their so-called leaders, including even the president in the White House, they point their fingers, while not literally doing so, asking, telling us, now that we have demonstrated we are incapable of protecting them, saving their lives and childhoods since we adults have failed at that, they are telling us that they are taking action to save their own lives, that they are taking the lead and invite us to join them. 

"Never again," they chant.

How to put this? To finesse this? 

Though it may be unflattering to acknowledge, their movement seems different because those this time calling us to action are not from working-class backgrounds or, as with Black Lives Matter, not from urban hot spots, but look and feel like they are our imagined best, especially so to the media covering their testimony and mobilization. 

As with most of the reporters and journalists covering them, they come from solidly middle-class backgrounds and, though as diverse as America is, are disproportionately white.

Sorry, in spite of our progress we are still tribal. That is still how it works, hardwired in our DNA. 

They are like the kids we have at home and send in trust to the schools. This is thus personal and as a result may be powerful enough not just to move us but perhaps even succeed in bringing about some long-needed change. 

They are a generation who have been waiting to find reasons to inspire them, to make their lives meaningful, authentic. They are bringing the lie to how they have been stereotyped--as self-indulgent Millennials.  They now have reasons to be inspired--what they have been looking for last week was brought right to their classroom door. 

And they are thus far proving up to the task.

Which in turn, in exactly a week, still bearing raw wounds, is why they wound up in the White House, invited there by President Trump, who actually, following notes written for him by others, actually found the capacity uncharacteristically to "listen." For 70 minutes at least. 

He mostly seemed to listen, and that was both appropriate and welcome, but when he spoke, after their riveting testimony, when he did turn to speak to them and us, all he could offer was to parrot NRA talking points from previous classroom massacres from Columbine, to Sandy Hook, and now to Parkland, Florida. 

What we need to do, he mouthed, is arm classroom teachers so when someone shows up bearing military weapons of mass destruction they will be able to shoot back with their handguns and thereby take control of the situation. They will be armed and prepared how to pause while teaching their current students to shoot back and kill one or more of their former classmates. All this on a teacher's salary.

The students at the White House meeting did not let him get away with this absurdity, respectfully asking if he expected a semi-trained teacher would be able to defend them from fully automatic military-style weapons with, by comparison, a pathetic handgun?

Trump had no answer but to repeat what the NRA has paid him to say. Thirty million dollars in campaign contributions for the 2016 election. 

It of course remains to be seen if these children, which some reminded us they still are, can sustain their effort. They know, as one in effect put it during last night's town hall on CNN, they are just at the beginning of a "5K" race. Though, it made me feel a wave of both emotion and optimism to see another correct him, saying, "No, some of this is a 'sprint,' so let's make it work because our lives are literally at stake."

March 29, 2016--Still Feeling the Bern

"Did you hear Bernie's speech this weekend?"

One of our very young friends was calling. It was clear she was excited.

"After winning the caucuses in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii. He really trounced Hillary."

"He's good at caucuses but not so much so in primaries where people actually vote."

"You're always so pessimistic about him."

"I think I'm being realistic. I keep my eye on the delegate count. Like it or not, they will select the nominee. And by my calculation, and that of pretty much everyone else, Hillary should win easily."

"I'm never going to vote for her." I felt badly that what I said deflated her.

"If it comes to that--I mean Hillary versus Trump or Cruz or whomever, you'd think of voting for one of them."

"Never."

"So . . . ?"

"So, maybe I won't vote at all."

"That sounds defeatist to me. Not voting for Hillary is just like voting for Trump or whoever."

"Now you sound just like my parents."

"Well," I said, trying to lighten the mood, "Sometimes even parents get it right."

"I didn't call to get you to convince me to give up my ideals. I'm young and I want . . ."

"Touché. I hope you'll except my apologies. Listening to myself, I think you're right. That's what I was trying to do. Get you to be 'realistic,' to compromise."

"There's time for that."

"Yes, I did hear his speech. I haven't listened to a speech of his for quiet awhile and thought . . ."

"Because you already gave up on him?"

"Probably true. Probably true. With so much going on on the Republican side I admit I haven't paid much attention to the Democrats. So I . . ."

"Tuned out Bernie. For what it's worth, I excuse you for that. What's going on with the Republicans is more fun." She laughed, and I was glad to hear she was back to being her usualy enthusiastic self. "I don't know about you, but I thought he was amazing."

"I was impressed. Too bad . . ."

"There you go again being negative. Even if he doesn't have much chance of winning the nomination, didn't you feel that everything he said was true?"

"I did. But even if he somehow manages to get elected, I doubt he could get Congress to go along with Medicare for all much less free tuition at public colleges and universities."

Ignoring that, she said, "And weren't you impressed with what he had to say about minorities--he went down the full list, including Native Americans. No one else even mentions them much less as compassionately and honestly as Bernie."

"True. We could go over his speech point by point and probably agree with pretty much everything."

"Particularly what he said about what he said about women. As a woman, a young woman I was excited about that."

"Doesn't he say similar things as Hillary? About equal wages, abortion, childcare leave?"

"Yes, but I wasn't as impressed about the list of specific issues as how he spoke about the importance of both women and men working together on them. Not just women. If these are family issues, he was saying, that has to include men."

"I noticed that and I too was impressed."

"This is not the way Hillary speaks about the next things that have to happen to secure more rights for women. She makes it sound as if it's only a women's issue when in fact it's a women's and men's issue. I think this difference between Bernie and Hilary is one of the reasons so many young women are supporting him."

"I haven't heard anyone mention this. So good for you."

"I've got to run in a minute, but one more thing."

"Sure."

"My feeling that you were pushing on me to be realistic, to compromise . . ."

"I already apologized for that."

"And I heard and appreciated that. But here's what I want to say about that--it's too soon for me to give up my ideals. Isn't that what young people are supposed to do--maintain their ideals? Weren't you like that when you were my age--not willing to give in? What with the antiwar and civil rights movements?"

"Fair points."

"And also, though I know it's unlikely, probably impossible for Bernie to win, if by some chance or fluke he manages to do so, I'd still want him to press Congress to raise Social Security benefits and make health care a right. And the rest of his agenda"

"But wouldn't he have to compromise to get anything done?"

"Not in advance the way I feel Obama tended to do. If we agree that everything Bernie said in his speech the other night is both true and right, to accomplish his goals, wouldn't it be smart for him to lay them all out in specifics and fight for them? Maybe he wouldn't win, but at least he'd get the discussion started and, who knows, maybe he'd get a few things done and set the agenda for the next decade or two."

"Go on."

"I know you like history."

"Yes."

"Isn't it true that Truman was the first president to call for universal health care, something even Nixon advocated, and then decades later Obamacare was approved and upheld? So who knows--maybe the things that Bernie wants to do could over time have the same results."

"Could be."

"Who was it who said that journeys of a thousand miles begin with a single step? Even revolutions."

I sensed she was smiling. Feeling good about herself.

"You know what?"

"What?"

"I love you. Very much."

February 11, 2016--The Excitement Gap: "I Want My Own 1960s"

I have a niece who is in her mid-20s. She is enthusiastic about the election. More so than during any of the six or seven years she's been eligible to vote.

"Why's that?" I asked recently, suspecting I knew the answer.

"I'm attracted to Bernie Sanders' ideas and ideals. He's serious about issues and his resonate with mine. I also like his mien."

"Understood, but what about Hillary?"

"I suppose she's all right," she said making a face.

"Suppose?"

"I'm turned off by her condescending outreach to young people. Very much including my generation of women."

"I've been hearing that. Of course I have. By now, who hasn't?" So I asked, "Tell me something new."

"I don't know if this is new but he, and I suppose Donald TRUMP," she made a face again, "is bringing a lot of excitement to the race. Not for the specific reasons Gloria Steinem said. To meet boys." I waited for her to make another face.

"What are your reasons?"

"As we've discussed before, I know about the '60s and the Kennedys and the music and counterculture of that era. I know about the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement. How politically it brought down the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. In many ways I wish I had lived then," she shrugged, "But of course I didn't. And then there were the Women's Movement and the battle for abortion rights and before that the Civil Rights Movement. I wasn't there for them either, but I have been around to support Gay Liberation and same-sex marriage."

"I'm not sure I know where you're going with this."

"My point is that those were not only important times but exciting ones. I know not all of it was joyous--protestors got beat up by police in some cases and by hard hats in others. And of course college students were shot and killed by the National Guard at Kent State. I do know about that. But there are a lot of serious problems now. The familiar list of problems from friends and other young people trapped in student loan debt and underemployed so they have to live with their parents. And there is the feeling that our place in the world is slipping. And above all else there's the growing gap between the top one percent and the rest of us. Bernie's big theme. Something he's right about and that most people on the left and even the right are feeling frustrated and angry about."

"Isn't Hillary talking about these things too?"

"I suppose. But with her it doesn't feel genuine. Or uplifting. Like she'll say whatever she thinks she needs to say to get elected."

"But again what about the excitement part?"

"Though she didn't express it in the best way, actually how she said it was insulting, but Gloria Steinem was on to something."

That surprised me. "What's that?"

"That it was, it still is, exciting to be involved in a movement to chance things. To engage in it with friends and, in the case of young people, with others who through social media can work together using social network websites, including those that tell you where to gather for meetings and rallies."

"I get that. It was exciting to march to end the war even if there was the threat of getting clubbed and beaten."

"You had your '60s," my niece said, "And now I want my own 1960s. You had your anti-war movement and I want the equivalent. You got arrested for what you believed in and even if there is danger I want to have that kind of cause to believe in and get mobilized around."

"I can understand that."

"My generation--so-called Millennials (I hate that name)--have been characterized by middle-age people as being self-indulgent and entitled. For some that may be true. But with concern about the climate, the economy, the people left behind, the rights still to be won, and crises all over the world, we finally have our causes and . . ."

She trailed off. "And?"

"And, it's exciting. Very. And that counts too."

February 8, 2016--The Gender Trap: Albright's Inferno or Where the Boys Are

At a campaign event on Saturday in Concord, NH, when introducing Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, scolded young women for supporting Bernie Sanders.

With the grinning Clinton at her side and New Jersey Senator, Wall-Street favorite, Cory Booker on stage left applauding enthusiastically (see below), the 78-year-old former secretary mocked Bernie Sander's political revolution, saying that electing the first female commander in chief would be "a true revolution."

Feeling it, she added--

"We can tell our story of how we climbed the ladder, and a lot of younger women think it's done. It's not done."

Feeling it even more, she apocalyptically shouted, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other!"

A "special place in hell"?

Later, to double-down, in an interview with NBC News, Albright said that "women could be judgmental toward one another and they occasionally forget how hard someone like Mrs. Clinton had to work to get to where she is."

Note that she referred to Ms Clinton as Mrs. Clinton. A bit of a hint about how hard she felt Hillary Clinton, wife of Bill, had to work to get to where she is.

Not to be outdone, Friday night on Bill Maher's Real Time, 81-year-old Gloria Steinem, perhaps the feminist movement's most prominent remaining icon, while explaining how women tend to become more active in politics as they grow older (this not verifiable by facts or data), claimed that younger women were backing Senator Sanders mainly because they could meet young men--"When you're young, you're thinking, 'Where are the boys?' The boys are with Bernie."

This self-revealing comment suggests that this might be some of what motivated Ms Steinem back in her day, but it also ignores the obvious evidence that half or more of Bernie's youthful supporters are women. The polling numbers show that.

This suggests, in Steinemian terms, that in reality "the girls," more than "the boys," are with Bernie and perhaps, to Ms Steinem, more comfortable projecting herself back to the 60s, it's deja vu again. As a reminder, check 19-year-old James Kunan's 1969 best seller, Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary, in which he confessed that a lot of guys showed up at the "revolution" to meet girls and get laid.

To be honest, that was at least half the reason I showed up at my Alma Mater, Columbia University, during the campus-occupation "revolution" of 1968. I did meet some girls but didn't manage to get any. Though I did manage to get my hands on one of President Grayson Kirk's cigars. Symbolism abounds.

This parade of strident, aging feminist supporters is the reason Hillary Clinton, to her tone-deaf chagrin, has thus far been unable to appeal to young women. Or to young men.

An astonishing 85 percent of them are with Bernie.

Talking at them, shaming them, and assigning them to hell will likely mean that 100 percent of young voters will soon be with Bernie.

It's not that young women (and many young men) are unaware of feminist history and how far the Madeleine Albrights, Gloria Steinems, and Hillary Clintons have come, or how hard that was, or how significant their achievements have been--how they blazed a trail and punched many cracks in the glass ceiling, all those good and remarkable things--but it is 2016 and young people do not want to be reminded constantly how much they are beholden to their grandmothers'' generation. (Yes, grandmothers--time is whipping along).

They want to live their lives, frankly taking advantage of the opportunities and ways of living brought about by their predecessors. They do not want to be told to look at everything through a gender lens. And they decidedly do not want be hectored by being told what to do, what to think, or what to feel. By men or by women.

It's their time.

December 2, 2014--Dumb Phone

I can finally come in from the cold thanks to Anna Wintour and Rihanna.

We sometimes go to places frequented by young people in part to get away from all the serious and tragic things that accrue to people our age. OK, my age. To soak up an alternate view of the world and my place in it. The existentials are working against me and I crave to know what the young people at The Smile are thinking and how they see the trajectory of their lives.

We are viable there, I think, in part because we're eager to listen and learn and because we represent an alternative view for them. They too are searching. So we have something to share.

Like so many of my generation I am fascinated and a little horrified by all the iPhoning. Feeling left out and even excluded, this is one of the things I've been eager to learn about. Why all the young people we know and see on the streets and in cafes are so relentlessly and ubiquitously tethered to their smart phone. What are they up to, sending back and forth, texting even as they step onto the elevator in our building early mornings, while walking up and down Broadway, while having coffee or meals with friends?

I admit to leaning in close on the elevator, looking over shoulders in an attempt to read what's going on on those luminescent screens. Glimpses suggest mindlessness, not anything personally or professional important or urgent.

Part of my alienation is self-imposed. I know my place, my generation.

And I know about the cell phone phone in my pocket.

It's a flip, dumb-phone with no Internet capacity and doesn't even allow me to send simple texts--assuming I ever wanted to. And so I keep it hidden in my pocket as out-of-sight as my young friends seem eager to have their smart-phones on display.

But then I learned from Michael Musto, self-described "night-life chronicler" for the New York Times that very with-it, very cool people such as Anna Wintour, Rihanna, and Scarlett Johansson have been spotted with old clamshell style phones like mine.

So the other day, after assurances by chronicler Musto, at The Smile, having breakfast with a couple of Millennium friends, without feeling dated and old, I put my flip-phone out on the table, side-by-side with their iPhones and, since they are more than with-it, they smiled in recognition of my new-found coolness. Or, more likely, maybe to humor me. They are that nice and compassionate.

I've been wondering about Scarlett and Anna and Rhianna. What's the story with them?

Maybe they don't want to be thought of as smart-phone zombies, the sort I see in my elevator or those in a hypnotic state as they navigate the cyber-Monday crowds on Broadway. Maybe they want to signal that they are too important to be all that accessible--or feel the need to be such--even to each other. To be tethered to a mobile device. Or, for that matter, to anything.

March 12, 2014--Millennials

I have a friend who is interested in the cultural differences between the waves of generations that have come of age since the end of the Second World War.

The first of these are the Baby Boomers, those born within the decade following the War. Then there was the Silent Generation, the Beat and 60s generations, and closer to now, Generation X and Generation Y, or the Millennials.

My friend is especially interested in the most recent generation, in part because he, in his mid-50s, is still pursuing a career and, on some days, will acknowledge he is beginning to feel a bit passed by by his Millennialist colleagues.

He says that his vast experience counts, but takes note of the fact that in his last two or three jobs (he has moved around quite a lot) those above him in the corporate hierarchy have been turning more and more to these 30- and even 20-somethings for their ideas and creative energy. In fact, to make the workplace comfortable for them, senior executives are reshaping the corporate culture and redesigning the physical workspace. My friend is not happy about this either. He likes his office with a partition and, if possible, even a door.

None of this is making him feel good about himself. In fact, he is beginning to sound depressed.

I am older and, though I am no longer traditionally employed, to tell the truth, I am also not all that happy about these changes. While he is struggling in a Generation-X/Generation-Y work world, I am still hung up on and struggling with (and against) the cultural shifts brought about by the huge population of Baby Boomers.

But, like my friend, I am trying to learn and get comfortable in the new world of smartphones and apps, selfies, hook-ups, tweets, and C.E.O.'s presiding at shareholder meetings in jeans and T shirts. Thank you for that Steve Jobs.

As part of the struggle to learn and understand, as an alternative to complaining and feeling sorry for myself, there were a couple of nuggets of helpful insight in Sunday's New York Times Business section.

The first was a front page story about successful teenage app creators. Some as young as 11 and 12 who are thinking about dropping out of high school to establish start-up businesses. As one said, Lebron James went right from high school to the National Basketball Association, so why not me?

There's even a TED-Talk affair underway in California pitched to these kids. And then there is the annual "Under 20 Summit." At the recent one, there were 350 attendees from ages 9(!) to 19. And there are some venture capitalists who are encouraging them to follow their dreams and talents. They can always finish high school later, they advise, and go to college if they subsequently dream about becoming accountants.

A staff member from one of these enabler organizations, the Theil Fellowship, which each year offers $100,000 each to 20 young people to help them pursue their innovations or businesses, said that college is not necessarily bad but reminds these youngsters that having a degree doesn't "insulate people from economic tumult." He coaches them "to strike while the iron is hot."

The president of Theil says that "The safe career track is totally broken." Even lawyers are laid off and some janitors have Ph.D.'s. Young people "need a greater sense of urgency than in the past [and] college has an infantilizing effect; it's an extension of adolescence."

Whatever one thinks about this, with the reality of members of the Gen-X and Z Generations streaming into the workplace, they must be accommodated.

About that the second piece in the Times was an interview with Jeff Lawson, C.E.O. of Twilio, a "cloud communications company" based in San Francisco.

When asked if he tries to create the kind of corporate culture that facilitates creative disagreement, he said--

We don't wait until the annual performance review to give feedback. You never want to have a surprise. This is especially important with Millennial workers, who really want feedback. They want to always be learning, always be growing, and they're looking for constant feedback. It's not that they're looking for constant praise, but rather they want to keep score. They want to know how they're doing. 

Part of it is the short cycle of Internet feedback, and people who grew up with the Internet just expect quick feedback on things. That's just part of the changing ethos. [Emphasis added.]

I don't know about you, but I dreaded those annual performance reviews and am quite happy when things unfold slowly. I suppose, I hope it's good that the world is soon to be in their hands. But . . .